Whilst the worlds, communities and characters within the virtual realm are all just arrangements of bytes of computer code, the interaction they represent is very real and very human. It has happened that people meeting as characters in a MUD have then developed relationships beyond the virtual world, some have fallen in love (with at least one couple marrying in the virtual world); sometimes real events can happen inside a virtual world (I know of one PhD student who was assessed by viva within a MOO).

It can be difficult to determine where the real begins and where the virtual ends. Where humans are concerned, there is as much real social interaction in a virtual world as there is in the physical world, and we disregard our social norms at our peril.